Husband rant - SAHM needing a sick day.

I’m sorry I’m also not with you. Parenting your own child is not a job, no more than being a spouse is, or maintaining your own home. Garden or car. It’s both laughable and deeply disturbing to suggest parenting your own is.

Op is not employed!! By all means if you're a SAHP make your husband employ you (I would!) but you sound ridiculous if you think employment law applies here. Should OP also be subject to working time directives? What about holiday pay? Where does it end? I actually agree that SAHPs should get this but then you have to actually do that - be a contractor to your partner, charge them for your time, have a contract and terms and declare it. Yes there's an argument that domestic labour is not valued but in my opinion that isn't helped when there are women who choose to do it for free. If your husband can afford to have you stay at home, he should compensate you. But you can't choose to leave employment and then cry that you have lost the perks and hard-fought employment rights, it's the same as when you go self employed you don't have them either. I don't think it's fair to impose that OPs partner should his own contractual leave which is there for when he needs leave from his job to share it with OP.

I'm not sure why you are resorting to personal attacks when clearly it's you with no understanding of employment law.

What I’m saying is that her husband isn’t her employer so discussing domestic sphere as if it’s employment doesn’t make sense.
You don’t have a “right” to sick leave from being a parent regardless of whether you have paid employment or not and regardless of whether you have a partner or not.
You are perfectly reasonable to expect your OH (if you have one) to work with you as a team to raise your children regardless of whether you both have paid employment, one is a SAHP or if neither of you have paid employment.
I think where it’s possible an employed parent should take a day off paid work in case a SAHP is sick or injured but it’s not always possible as it’s basically dependent on most cases on the goodwill of their employer.

You say “In effect you are arguing that she has to work with no boundaries or breaks because in a family, the domestic sphere , one can not talk of rights but only duties”

I suppose I am in a way. Being a parent primarily is about taking on a set of responsibilities that you have to manage even when you are poorly, injured, grieving for a bereavement or whatever else. I don’t think that’s limited to SAHP though.

I guess the original q was about whether it was reasonable or not to expect OPs OH to take leave to care for their child with good grace as she was injured and people are answering in the context of how employment laws are structured. As things stand the OH in this scenario has limited rights to take leave in the described scenario and may well not be entitled to pay. Given that context it’s not unreasonable they might be reluctant to take leave. I don’t think that’s really anything to do with how much they do or don’t value their OHs contribution/labour but more to do with how their employer would react & what’s practically feasible.

You seem to not be talking about what is/is not reasonable in the context of how the current systems operate but rather what you think the optimal system would be. I think I probably agree with you about what the optimal system would be and definitely agree we should place a greater value on the contributions on made in traditionally female roles (even in a commercial setting those who are carers, nursery staff etc are predominantly poorly paid so it’s very obvious the degree to which that work is undervalued). I also think though that while you can work on changing the system you have to operate within the existing one for now. If you only have one person earning there will be a lot of pressure on them to provide and that likely both means they might push through and work when unwell themselves and that they may feel unable to take time off to take over childcare responsibilities when their partner is unwell.

It’s unfortunate it’s such a fraught topic as I think working and SAHP can be very unkind and judgemental about one another a lot of the time which makes reasonable discussion challenging.

On a practical level though, even with me agreeing we should value SAHPs work, I am not quite sure how that would look/operate.

Yours is just an enormously rigid, legalistic approach to what the OP, and I, and feminists and philosophers are thinking about in broad, humanistic, strokes. We are simply talking past each other. “A human right” “my human right” this is “humane”, this is “inhumane” are not terms that we have to limit to the purely legalistic definition. And, in fact, they don’t begin or end there. The declaration of the rights of man, the UN declaration of the rights of women, the idea of legally defensible rights, begins with an idea that originates outside the legal sphere and is brought in it by the hard work of those who choose tovtry to broaden protections, like rights, that used to be accorded the few.

OP rightly observed that to her mind her work in the home deserves the same respect for treatment that her dh’s work outside the hime gets. He is not expected to work while injured and she ought not to either. In effect you are arguing that she has to work with no boundaries or breaks because in a family, the domestic sphere , one can not talk of rights but only duties. But he gets to be half in and half out, doesn’t he? When he is home sick in bed she doesn’t get to require him to keep earning or take over child care or housecleaning to earn his keep.

Sick leave is part of your employment rights and yes there are many employee rights that workers have fought for and won.
Being a SAHP isn’t employment. Kids having a parent with them at home is absolutely of value and undoubtedly also facilitates a better work/life balance for a partner with paid employment. My OH and I both had a period of having 1 day each with the kids and 4 days in the office when kids were small & I absolutely believe that was beneficial for the kids and had value for all of us but I never considered that day as working anymore than I’d consider having kids at weekend as working.
Employment regulations to protect workers rights largely exist to avoid employers taking unfair advantage of their employees. In a domestic setting if you want to try and have the same type of rights how do you see that working practically?
It sounds like in this instance the OPs partner was initially unsympathetic and a bit dismissive and that they’ve subsequently talked about it and figured out what works for them. I think in a domestic setting that’s the approach that would work best. To discuss what has upset either of you/you feel is unfair and agree what works best for you as a couple. Framing it as a human rights violation just seems a bit ridiculous. Do you think it’s a human rights violation if a single parent has to care for their kids while sick? What about a parent who has a partner who works away and is responsible for kids alone for several weeks at a time. Or do you really just mean it’s pretty shit for the OP to have to soldier on and that it might be more equitable if her OH was more willing to take leave to help? If it’s that I agree with you but also can see why that might not be feasible for everyone. OP already stated for her OH it’s a possible option and that’s why she was a bit hurt and annoyed. Totally understandable how she felt but still not a human rights violation.

Are workers entitled to sick days from work? Are they entitled to pay for work and limited work hours? These are sll limitations on exploitation that workers have fought for.

If your argument is that domestic households and domestic relationships exist outside of contract law, rights, money, etc… —that is a very conservative and ultimately patriarchal and misogynistic view. You end up valorizing and protecting only that which can be monetized in the market outside the domestic sphere—only he “works” and only his eork has meaning or legal protection. While her work—even the literally irreplaceable burden of child birth (labour) is also unrecognized and unprotected.

I get that this is all a bit above your head but its not that hard.

Make sure that if your gp refuses to do a scan based on physio advice, they put that in your records that they went against advice given.

Do you really think OP is being denied her human rights because her husband isn't using his annual leave to stay home because her knee hurts...? 🥴

Human rights by their very nature are exactly a matter of fact and defined in law.

Because the concept of a human right is aspirational and motivational not a matter of fact or law. Like words such as dignity, autonomy, compassion it speaks to our values and shared humanity.

Glad to hear it OP.

Hope your leg gets better soon.

How is it a race to the bottom to say a “sick day” isn’t a human right, and that sahp’s don’t have a legal entitlement to sick pay and annual leave? They are both straight facts.

Ah the race to the bottom! How quickly we fall through the floor of the barrel!

The self employed don't get paid sick or carers leave. And many people are on a self employed contract even if they mainly work for one customer

My message above was in response to this one which didn't appear in my message for some reason.

Didimum · Yesterday 11:17
Sounds as if you've got a bit of a crap husband there. If he has genuine concerns about finances or missing time when his workload is heavy, then he can come and discuss it with you and come to a solution – like the loving partnership you're meant to be. Instead he is sulking because he likely just doesn't want to spend time looking after his child.

Yes of course. That's absolutely it. If someone is a loving, caring partner they don't guilt you or castigate you for having needs or asking for help. They talk it through with you and you jointly come to a solution. You don't sound like a needy person OP, just a person with needs which is entirely different.

In that way you feel supported and validated even if he can't help out every time. Ignore some of the nasty comments on here. If you're a SAHM on MN you're supposed to be on your knees kissing your partner's feet daily for bestowing this gift of cleaning his pants and making his life supremely easy apart from work.

Thank you for pointing this out.

Lots of women go SAHM or part time (guess what part time does to their career prospects?

Not sure how any woman can expect otherwise. Women choose to have kids, that comes with sacrifice. Industries move on and businesses want to employ the best people. A woman out of touch isn’t the best person. I would say that the majority of parenthood is based on the woman’s desire to be a mother. If a man desires it lies, he can sacrifice his career. But that rarely happens. So make your choice.

I think some people in their desperation to argue the benefit of sahp are forgetting this is what the op wanted. She said she wanted to step back and stay home.and that’s great she got to do what she wanted. She isn’t doing it as some form of altruistic act to support her husbands career.

She’s not some 50s house wife.

He on the other hand doesn’t need her to stay home, nor has she said he requested she do so. Yes she needs him to work to pay the bills and allow her to stay home. That’s simply factual.

people don’t need to twist themselves into knots trying to say how much value she brings, how he couldn’t cope without her, couldn’t work, couldn’t afford ro replace her, it’s just silly, there is no need for it. She wanted to stay home, he’s happy for her to do so, there is no suggestion she’s doing it for him or he couldn’t work unless she did.

what she is doing is valuable to her, maybe valuable to her kid, her husband at times, that’s all that’s required.

So not a human right then...anything else? 🙄

I'm carer for my disabled son and also work. WFH but I work. I don't necessarily get time off when sick or ever but I still know it's my right and what I deserve.

Anything else?

@ASimpleLampoon
"You do realise that resting while sick or injured is a human right, you don't give up that right because your an SAHM."

It's not though is it? It's nice but it's a privilege. What do you think self employed people do if they can't afford to take a day off? At the end of the day as PP have said SAHMs aren't employed - they don't have things that might seem like a given like annual leave or sick leave and their working spouses that do have them have criteria on when and how they're allowed to use them and taking a day to show empathy to your partner isn't one of the criteria.

You do realise that resting while sick or injured is a human right, you don't give up that right because your an SAHM.

What does he do when he's sick? I bet he just simply rests without a second though and you carry on doing what you do. Am I right?

If being SAHP is a privilege then so is having a partner who is one it makes their lives considerably easier. Believe me if it were that much of a burden to fund it then far fewer men would be agreeable to it, and many seem to be even though they then balk at their partner showing the slightest human need tif it inconveniences them a little.

(As an aside if working mum's are exhausted "doing it all" then they have a DH /Baby daddy problem , their hardship is not caused by SAHMs so no need to bitch about it)

I hope you recover quickly and when you do please make a medium or long term plan to go back to work, and make sure that the involves your husband picking up slack as you rebuild your working life. Don't make yourself vulnerable if it's not appreciated.

I’m not sure no one would expect it of a man. I imagine if a woman posted saying her SAHP husband had asked that she stay home due to a sprain then the responses would be similar. I also think plenty of employers expect staff to turn up when sick (regardless of their sex) unless they are basically ready to be hospitalised or are throwing up. It’s not a good thing and it shouldn’t be that way but it’s a tad unfair to suggest it only applies to mothers. I also think more men wouldn’t take a day off work for a nasty sprain than would. Probably same for women.

No one said it wasn’t easier with live in help. What was said was it wasn’t necessary. And it’s not.